KUALA LUMPUR, March 22 — Tony Pua will sue Datuk Seri Zahid Hamidi next week after the defence minister did not retract his allegation that the Petaling Jaya Utara MP was once arrested in Singapore.
“Then he can bring proof that I was arrested,” said the DAP publicity chief.
He said that he had given the Umno vice president 24 hours to apologise for claiming last Friday that Pua had been arrested in Singapore.
“However, three days later, I've not heard anything from him,” said Pua.
Zahid had told reporters that Pua had been arrested in Singapore and taken to court before being released, which barred him from public office there.
The minister also suggested that the DAP man was freed on account of his “good relationship” with “a certain office” there, an apparent reference to Datuk Bung Mokhtar Radin’s earlier claim that Pua was a Singaporean agent.
The controversial Kinabatangan MP had levelled the accusation at Pua in Parliament on Wednesday.
Pua had claimed that he had never been charged for any civil or criminal case, “not even for jaywalking”, and strongly denied he had any relationship with the Singapore government or that he was interested in taking part in the republic’s politics.
He called the claims “baseless and slanderous lies”. Pua (picture) said he could not believe Zahid would “stoop so low” to divert public attention away from deals worth RM13.6 billion signed last month by his ministry.
Pua had accused Zahid of attempting to shift public attention from his ministry’s RM6 billion purchase of six offshore patrol vessels and the RM7.6 billion bill for 257 armoured wheeled vehicles.
Pua's lawyer Gobind Singh Deo said that they would file the suit even if Zahid issued an apology within the week.
“We will file the suit and see what happens from there,” the Puchong MP said, adding that no value of damages will be specified as it was about the principle against the alleged defamation. - Malaysian Insider
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.